Kiskunfélegyháza
The town of Kiskunfélegyháza lies 101 metres above sea-level at the boundary between the river Tisza valley and the Danube-and-Tisza sand-plateau, 110 km away from Budapest and 20 km from Szeged, on the international motorway E5.
Geography
The sand-plateau of Little Cumania (the geographical name of this district of South-Central Hungary) is one of the most diversified sceneries of the Great Hungarian Plain. The surface of this region with lots of dunes was once wind-formed form the deposits of the Danube. West of the town, in the area of Izsák and Bugac, the sand is still moved or driven by stronger winds while the region east of the town, in the valley of the Tisza river, is a complete plain, variegated with small lakes.
Within the continental climate prevailing in Hungary the microclimate of the town is charecterised by especially long sunny periods a precipitation of 600 mm per annum respecting in extremely dry air conditions. The cultivated environments of the town were formed during the last century after the Tisza river and other inland waters had been regulated. The sandy soil was bound by planting vineyards and acacia woods.
Now the arable lands and the horticultural areas are mainly used for growing vegetables and fruits while the fields of large-scale cultivate on serve for growing cereals.
History
The development of the town with 3500 inhabitants is closely linked to the history of the Cumanian people. The wandering tribes of the Cumanian and Jazygian people speaking a Turkish language and fleeing from the Tartars were settled by King Béla IV on his scarcely populated territory of the country in 1239.
In exchange for the military services they were privileged and their settlements enjoyed a high degree of independence. In the place of today's Kiskunfélegyháza there was a village with a church already in this early age. The name of the town was first mentioned as "Feledház" in one of King Zsigmond's diplomas in 1389. In 1526 Turkish troops invading the country brutally massacred the entire population. For more then 200 years the town was turned into an unpopulated desert.
After the troops of the Ottoman Empire had been driven out from Hungary Emperor Leopold donated the town the Teutonic Order as a pledge, but the 219 families settled down in 1743 redeemed their lands already 2 years later. Upon being restored to the rights of free peasants and to self-government the community started a rapid growth. 100 years later, in 1843, its population amounted to as much as 17 000. As a result of the rapid development the Court of Justice of the District of Little Cumania was established here in 1753, so the town became the centre of 8 Cumanian settlements and 34 farmsteads. A new impetus to the development was when Empress Maria Theresa promoted the community to the rank of a market-town.
Influenced by the status of a municipium and by the fast development of bourgeois civilisation the town became and increasingly significant centre. The grammar schoold founded in 1809 admitted student from the far most regions of the country and even from abroad. The majority of school-teachers in the primary schools of the Great Hungarian Plain took the degree in the teachers' training-college opened in 1876. The inhabitants of the town have now a good reasin to be proud of the fact that poets and writers like Sándor Petőfi, Ferenc Móra and József Darvas were als among the students of this town.
When Little Cumania was incorporated in the country administration system of Hungary in 1876 and the independent status of the district ceased to exist, also Kiskunfélegyháza lost a lot of its significance as a cultural and economic centre.
The movements of poor peasantry late in the last century and the revolution in 1919 further contributed to the oppositional attitude of the town. Mostly as a result of this, almost no development was granted to the town in the inter-war period. Only the construction works of recent decades changed its village like character. Even beside the modern buildings of the Kossuth Street and in the transitory section of the motorway E5, furthermore the housing estates giving a modern character of the town, Kiskunfélegyháza could also preserve the atmosphere of its old streets border on both sides by flourishing gardens.
The industry of the town started to develop at the end of the 19th century. There are several factories (shoe, plastic, machinery, power boiler companies) employing the people from the neighbouring areas as well.
Our famous poet called Sándor Petőfi announced Félegyháza as his home town in his adult age. His poem "Szülőföldem" (My birth place) remained in his hand writing, in which the poet visiting the town in 1848 writes as a man:
"This town is my birth place...."